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Biotechnology as End Game: Ontological and Ethical Collapse in the “Biotech Century”

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Abstract

I argue in this paper that animal biotechnology constitutes a dangerous ontological collapse between animals and the technical-economic apparatus. By ontological collapse, I mean the elimination of fundamental ontological tensions between embodied subjects and the principles of scientific, technological, and economic rationalization. Biotechnology imposes this collapse in various ways: by genetically “reprogramming” animals to serve as uniform commodities, by abstracting them into data and code, and, in some cases, by literally manipulating their movements with computer technologies. These and other forms of ontological violence not only lead to profound physical suffering for the animals involved, but also distort the phenomenological basis of their existence, especially their perceptual experience and expression of subjective time and space. In subordinating nonhuman animals to the logic of “technological rationality” or “technique,” to borrow Herbert Marcuse and Jacques Ellul’s respective terms, biotechnology perpetuates the productive extermination of animals. Biotech animals are exterminated in the sense of being “drive[n] beyond the boundaries” of meaningful existence and “destroyed completely” or “completely wiped out” as subjects. But they are also exterminated in the sense of being “overproduced” and “overgenerated,” both quantitatively and qualitatively. I go on to argue that the collapse of the ontological is accompanied by a collapse of the ethical. This ethical collapse is characterized by the internalization of the logic of technique and the corresponding failure both within technoscientific culture itself and within some scholarly discourses about biotechnology to evaluate from a genuinely critical vantage point the fundamental ethical issues that animal biotechnology raises. The aim of this paper is to offer an alternative analysis of the ontological and ethical implications of biotechnology from the standpoint of Marcuse and Ellul’s critical theory of technology. To explore other ramifications of animal biotechnology, I draw on Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s insights into ideologies of extermination and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment.

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Notes

  1. Hai et al [4]; Best [5]. I also refer to these biotechnologies in the context of a critique of posthumanism in Zipporah Weisberg, “The Trouble with Posthumanism: Bacteria are People Too,” in Critical Animal Studies: Thinking the Unthinkable, ed. John Sorenson (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2014), 99. I explore a number of the key issues addressed in this article (viz., technological rationality, the symbolic and material integration of animals with the technical apparatus within and beyond the context of biotech, posthumanists’ tendency to glorify technoscience at the expense of ethics, and the derogation of species integrity) in two previous publications: Zipporah Weisberg, “The Trouble with Posthumanism: Bacteria are People Too,” in Critical Animal Studies: Thinking the Unthinkable, ed. John Sorenson (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2014), 99 and Zipporah Weisberg, The broken promises of monsters: Haraway, animals, and the humanist legacy, Journal for Critical Animal Studies 2:2 (2009). This article develops these ideas into a much more focused and systematic critique of biotechnology as a form of productive extermination than I have hitherto undertaken. I also pay much closer attention here to the phenomenological implications for other animals of genetic manipulation.

  2. Carol Gigliotti, “Introduction,” in Leonardo’s Choice, xii.

  3. I do not wish to reinforce human/animal dualism; however, for the sake of simplicity and clarity, I refer to nonhuman animals (i.e., vertebrates and invertebrates) throughout this paper simply as “animals.”

  4. See, for example, “Expiration Fate: Can ‘De-Extinction’ Bring Back Lost Species?” Scientific American, March 31, 2013, accessed June 11, 2013, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-de-extinction-movement-all-about.

  5. Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary Unabridged, 2nd ed., s.v. “exterminate.”

  6. Cited in [11]

  7. CCAC guidelines: on procurement of animals used in science [12]. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity defines biotechnology as “any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms, or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use” (Article 2). UN Convention on Biological Diversity [13] The Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) describes biotechnology as the “the application of science and engineering in the direct or indirect use of living organisms or parts or products of living organisms in their natural or modified forms.” “What is Biotechnology,” “Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999,” Environment Canada, accessed June 5, 2012, http://www.ec.gc.ca/lcpe-cepa/default.asp?lang=En&n=24374285-1&offset=1&toc=show.

  8. “The 1998 Canadian Biotechnology Strategy: An Ongoing Renewal Process,” 1998, Government of Canada: Biostrategy, accessed June 5, 2012, http://www.biostrategy.gc.ca/english/View.asp?pmiid=520&x=535.

  9. Bacon [16]. For a discussion of Bacon’s relevance to modern technoscience, see Weisberg [17].

  10. Rose-Mary Sargent, “Introduction,” in Francis Bacon, xvi.

  11. “Subjects-of-a-life,” on Regan’s definition, are nonhuman animals that “bring the mystery of a unified psychological presence to the world.” Among other things, they “see and hear, believe and desire, remember and anticipate, plan and intend.” I qualify Regan’s definition by emphasizing how meaningful animals’ lives are (to themselves, to each other, and to us) in the phenomenological as well as the conventional sense of the term to which Regan refers. In so doing, I expand the applicability of the category to a much wider array of animals than “mentally normal mammals of a year or more” to which Regan initially restricts it. Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), xvi.

  12. See in Weisberg, “The trouble with posthumanism. See especially page 99, where I state, ”These and other transgenic animals are wholly integrated into the machinery of production.”

  13. See note 10, where I indicate that I have discussed this concept of integration elsewhere.

  14. Meidinger et al. [23]; Forsberg et al. [24]; Pollack [25]. In 2010, the Canadian government approved the reproduction of Enviropig, but not its sale and consumption. As a result, Ontario Pork pulled its funding from the project. Another reason the industry backed out was because it turns out that farmers can simply provide their pigs with a supplement to aid digestion of phosphorous at a very low cost, which cancels the need for genetic modifications. When the project was abandoned, the pigs were not rehoused in a sanctuary to live out the rest of their lives in relative peace but were killed and disposed of as biowaste.

  15. Rutherford, Synthetic biology.

  16. Best, “Genetic Science,” 8.

  17. Robo-pigeon, Daily Mail.

  18. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 87; 94.

  19. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of enlightenment, 9. Rationalization.

  20. Although synthetic biology typically deals with microorganisms and not animals as such, the term is sometimes used interchangeably with biotechnology. See the Fidelity Investment ad cited above, for example.

  21. Rutherford, Synthetic biology.

  22. Gigliotti, Introduction, xvii. Italics added.

  23. Thacker, Data made flesh, 92.

  24. Marcuse, One-dimensional man, 152.

  25. Ian Sample, Craig Venter. Italics added.

  26. Sample, Craig Venter.

  27. Best, Genetic science, 4.

  28. Gigliotti, Introduction, xv–xvi.

  29. Best, Genetic science, 10.

  30. I refer for the first time to the disintegration of transgenic animals in Weisberg, “The trouble with posthumanism,” 99.

  31. Marcuse, One-dimensional man, 125.

  32. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of perception, 483; 490

  33. Cited in Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of perception, 30.

  34. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of perception, 292.

  35. Harvey, The condition of postmodernity, 205.

  36. I am borrowing this term from Rifkin, The biotech century, 101

  37. Harvey, The condition of postmodernity, 240.

  38. Marcuse, One-dimensional man, 12.

  39. Newell-McLaughlin and Re, The evolution of biotechnology, 47.

  40. Newell-McLaughlin and Re, The evolution of biotechnology, 48.

  41. Davis, Procrustean solutions, 35.

  42. Cited in Hannah Rubenstein, Goats.

  43. Ellul, The technological society, 74.

  44. Ellul, The technological society, 97.

  45. Ellul, The technological society, 134.

  46. Ellul, The technological society, 134.

  47. Ellul, The technological society, 74.

  48. Ellul, The technological society, 97.

  49. “Annex C: Federal Regulatory Framework for Biotechnology,” The 1998 Canadian Biotechnology Strategy: An Ongoing Renewal Process, 1998, accessed June 5, 2012, http://www.biostrategy.gc.ca/english/View.asp?pmiid=520&x=535.

  50. CCAC guidelines on transgenic animals.

  51. CCAC guidelines on transgenic animals.

  52. This brief critique of some posthumanists’ glorification of hybridity is anticipated by two previously published pieces already cited in this article: Weisberg, “The broken promises of monsters: Haraway, animals, and the humanist legacy”

  53. Twine and Stephens, Introduction, 125.

  54. Weisberg. The trouble with posthumanism. 101–103

  55. Rollin, The ‘Frankenstein thing’, 284.

  56. Rollin, The ‘Frankenstein thing’, 284.

  57. Rollin, The Frankenstein syndrome, 171.

  58. Robert and Baylis, Crossing species boundaries, 6.

  59. Robert and Baylis, Crossing species boundaries, 5.

  60. Robert and Baylis, Crossing species boundaries, 8.

  61. Robert and Baylis, Crossing species boundaries, 7.

  62. Thompson, The opposite of human enhancement, 305–316.

  63. Thompson, The opposite of human enhancement, 308.

  64. Thompson, The opposite of human enhancement, 311.

  65. Thompson, The opposite of human enhancement, 309.

  66. Thompson, The opposite of human enhancement, 309.

  67. Palmer, Animal disenhancement, 45.

  68. Ferrari, Animal disenhancement, 68.

  69. Twine, Is biotechnology deconstructing animal domestication, 146.

  70. Stephens, Growing meat in laboratories, 175.

  71. Stephens, Growing meat in laboratories, 166.

  72. Joy [72] And, as with other non-vegan alternatives such as “humane” farming, IVM would actually encourage people to continue eating factory-farmed meat when IVM was not available. Their conscience would be alleviated because they could reassure themselves that “most of the time,” whenever it is available, they eat cruelty-free IVM instead.

  73. Marcuse, One-dimensional man, 12.

  74. Linzey, Genetic engineering, 325.

  75. Linzey, Genetic engineering, 325.

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Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to a number of people for their helpful comments and suggestions on this article as it progressed through several drafts, especially Asher Horowitz, John Sanbonmatsu, Will Kymlicka, Sue Donaldson, Christopher Coenen, and Arianna Ferrari. I am also very grateful for the support of the Abby Benjamin Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Animal Ethics in the Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, John Watson Hall, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada

    Zipporah Weisberg

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Weisberg, Z. Biotechnology as End Game: Ontological and Ethical Collapse in the “Biotech Century”. Nanoethics 9, 39–54 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-014-0219-5

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